No one likes being last. But, I realised yesterday that you need to get comfortable with it. Sometimes, that’s exactly the right place to be.
Articles
From running 100 miles to living a full life
Every now and then, I stumble across a handful of awesome articles over the course of a few days. That happened this week, so I wanted to share them.
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My favourite life changing books
I read a great article recently — If It’s Important, Learn It Repeatedly. It makes a good case for going back and re-reading important books.
So, I went back and read Deep Work by Cal Newport. It’s one of my favorite books and it was even better the second time round. It gave me a renewed enthusiasm for doing deep work and some fresh ideas for how to go about it.
It got me thinking, what other books could I go back and read again?
High risk investing & cryptocurrency
Whenever anyone asks me for advice about investing, I always give the same response:
Invest in indexes. Contribute regularly, hold for the long term and rarely check.
Then I point them towards two bits of reading — JL Collins Stock Series and Warren Buffett’s $1 million bet. These do a great job of outlining the above approach, with some proof that it actually works.
You’re gone in three generations and nobody cares
Yeah, that’s the cold truth.
OK. Maybe Elon Musk is an outlier. Benjamin Franklin definitely is. But, it’s lottery ticket probability that you’ll do something that has an impact beyond even a few generations.
For 99.99% of us, it’s true — you’re gone in three generations and nobody cares.
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How I think about everything in life
As we get older (and hopefully wiser), our thinking about the important things in life changes. We learn new things. We have amazing, good, bad and awful experiences. We try things that work and don’t work. We slowly build informed opinions and beliefs from all of this.
I’ve noticed that in the first 35 years of life, my thinking on certain things has changed a lot. As I’ve got closer to 40, things are starting to settle. I’ve had a few epiphany / mid life type movements. These have either solidified how I think about something, or significantly changed my thinking — probably for the rest of my life.
How to plan a killer week
Get more done, spend more time on what really matters and be happier. It sounds too good to be true, but it isn’t.
Planning the week ahead could be the one, single biggest thing you can do to get more done — and be happier. It’s usually the difference between a bad, or an awesome week.
7 things to look for in a dream job
I made a tough decision towards the end of last year — I changed my work situation. What made it tough was, it was a good job, at a good company. It ticked most of the boxes.
Can technology free us from technology?
I’ve been using Freedom for the last couple of weeks, with interesting results.
Freedom is an app that helps you control distractions by blocking the internet, apps and websites — or any combination of those. You can start a freedom session whenever you like, or schedule a session for the future. It supports recurring sessions too. You have complete control over how long you want sessions to be, and what distractions you want to block.
Why you need to become a morning person
I’ve written about morning routines, quite frankly, more than anyone should. That’s because I believe waking up early is about the most life changing thing you can do.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most of the people I consider successful and happy, get up early and follow some type of morning routine. I challenge you to think about this too. Look at well known people, colleagues and friends. I bet you come to the same conclusion.
“But, I’m just not a morning person” you say. “I do my best work later in the day”.
I’m not buying it. For 99.9% of us, it’s much better to become a morning person.
Why? I think it boils down to these 3 things:
- Getting up early sets a tone for the day. It builds positive momentum from the get go, which then flows into the rest of the day. When I get up early and do things that are important to me (without distractions), the rest of the day usually goes well. I feel satisfied at the end of the day. When I get up late, I almost always drift into bad habits and have a bad day. I know I didn’t make the best use of my time and wasn’t the person I wanted to be.
- It allows you to make consistent progress on things that are important to you — whether that is exercise, writing, working on a personal project, reading etc. Morning routines build consistency, largely because of the lack of distractions (everyone else is asleep). Over time, that establishes habits.
- Getting up early builds a certain strength in character and mindset. You start to feel stronger and more disciplined than others. That breeds confidence and influences how you attack the day. It’s hard to beat the feeling of watching others come into work, knowing you’ve already exercised, worked on a personal project, got ahead of your email and done a block of focused work. Not only are you ahead on output, you’re ahead on mindset.
Jocko Willink, sums it up more succinctly than me:
“Discipline equals freedom, and that discipline begins every morning when my alarm goes off, well before the sun rises.” Jocko Willink.
And for proof, he posts one of these every day:
If you want it, GO GET IT. pic.twitter.com/aGLcRiVLV3
— Jocko Willink (@jockowillink) December 12, 2017
If you’re not waking up early, how do you start?
Simple and small.
Go to bed a little earlier. Get up a little bit earlier (i.e. 30 mins), and do one or two things. Meditate for 5 mins and take a short walk. Read or work on a personal project. Whatever is important to you. Keep it simple, easy and small for at least 30 days.
Once you get to 30 days, extend the time and perhaps add something else in. The biggest mistake you can make is to go from simple, easy and small — to complicated, hard and big. And I guarantee, you will make that mistake. Learn from it. Go back to simple, easy and small and then layer in a little bit more for the next 30 days.
It sounds unambitious, but it’s the best and fastest path to a longer, more impressive morning routine. By starting simple, easy and small — you establish the habit of getting up early and doing important things. And that’s the key to it all.
I just switched up my morning routine (part of what inspired this post). Here’s what it looks like:
- 04.30 — 05.15: GMB Elements
- 05.15 — 05.30: read a chapter from ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’
- 05.30 — 06.30: write
- 06.30 — 07.00: plan day
I’ve only done it a couple of times, and it’s feeling really good. It’s a good mix of exercise, working on myself, working on a skill and setting myself up for an awesome day. I should also note, I go to bed before 10PM so I can get up that early.
If you’re not waking up early — try it. I’m confident you won’t go back.
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